Repeatability and agreement of five imaging systems for measuring anterior segment parameters in healthy eyes.

PURPOSE: The purpose of this study is to assess the repeatability and agreement of five imaging devices, namely, the Pentacam (Oculus), Sirius (CSO), Orbscan IIz (Bausch and Lomb), Corvis (Oculus), and ultrasound pachymetry (UP, Tomey) in measuring steep keratometry (sKm), flat keratometry (fKm), central corneal thickness (CCT), thinnest corneal thickness (TCT), and anterior chamber depth (ACD) in healthy individuals.

DESIGN: This was prospective, comparative study.

SUBJECTS: Forty-six healthy Indian patients.

MATERIALS AND METHODS: Forty-six eyes of 46 healthy participants underwent three consecutive scans on each device by a single examiner. Within-subject standard deviation, test-retest repeatability (TRT), and coefficient of variation (COV) for assessing repeatability and Bland-Altman plots for the agreement between the mean measurements of each machine were analyzed.

MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: The repeatability and agreement between the five devices for the measurements of sKm, fKm, CCT, TCT, and ACD.

RESULTS: The TRT of sKm measurements ranged between 0.23 diopter (D) (with Pentacam) and 0.83 D (with Orbscan). The same of fKm, TCT, ACD, and CCT measurements ranged between 0.28 D (with Pentacam) and 0.74 D (with Sirius), 7.78 μm (Sirius) and 19.81 μm (Orbscan), 0.05 mm (Orbscan) and 0.07 (Sirius), and 7.36 μm (Sirius) and 18.02 μm (Orbscan), respectively. The TRT of sKm and fKm measurements with Pentacam was significantly lower than those with Orbscan and Sirius. The TRT of TCT measurement with Sirius was significantly lower than that with Pentacam (4.53 μm) and Orbscan (7.15 μm). There were statistically significant differences in the mean measurements of all parameters between the devices. The 95% limit of agreement on the Bland-Altman analysis was wide for the measurement pairs with all the devices. Significant proportional bias in the agreement was detected for TCT measurements with all the device pairs and for the ACD measurements between Sirius and Pentacam.

CONCLUSIONS: The repeatability estimates of sKm, fKm, TCT, ACD, and CCT measurements with Pentacam, Orbscan, Sirius, Corvis, and UP in Indian eyes were good. However, the differences in the measurements between the devices were statistically significant and the same cannot be used interchangeably for anterior segments measurements.